Eddie Murphy has insisted the sequel to Coming To America connects brilliantly to its 30-year-old original, after people told him not to stuff up the revisit.
The comedian is taking on his character of Prince Akeem more than three decades after the film became a classic, with 58-year-old Eddie recently opening up about how impressed he was himself with how they pulled it off.
‘I’m just over the moon with how it’s turned out,’ he told Antonio Banderas in Variety‘s Actors on Actors video series.
While he wouldn’t give too much away about the plot, he did say there was a ‘clever’ way to revisit the story, even though there is such a large time gap between the two.
Despite the gap, Eddie says he’s still floored by the reaction to the characters.
‘I don’t know what it is about that movie, but that’s the one movie that I’ve done that, like, on Halloween people dress up like the characters, and people always say lines from that movie to me,’ he said this week.
He added: ‘We figured out a way to connect it, and that’s what we’re doing now.’
Coming To America 2 will be released next year, and sees Eddie reprise his role as Prince Akeem – who swapped fictional African country Zamunda for New York in a bid to find love.
Speaking to Ellen DeGeneres last week, Eddie said: ‘A lot of people had this expectation, people would say to me when they found out I was doing it, “Don’t f*ck that movie up”.
‘We’ve gone above and beyond what anybody would think.’
Earlier this year the former Saturday Night Live comedian confirmed we would be blessed with a Coming To America sequel, and director Craig Brewer revealed it was a ‘dream come true’ to be given the job – as the first film is one of his favourites.
He said: ‘Every day I just want to go back in a time machine and talk to my 16 year old self and say, “You’ll never guess what you’re going to be doing in the future.”
‘When I was 16 and watching Coming to America I wanted to be Prince Akeem. But now I’ve got two kids and some life behind me, I find that I’m probably a little bit closer to King Jaffe, James Earl Jones’ character!’
Last month Eddie was seen running around the streets of New York filming the sequel, dressed in his Akeem regalia.
It has not been revealed why exactly Akeem was running all over Queens – maybe he ran out of Soul Glo? Or he was racing to catch Sexual Chocolate’s latest gig?
All will be revealed in due course.
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